Thursday, June 28, 2007

Like I mentioned in a previous post, I am a yeast virgin. So when hosts Quellia and Freya announced that bagels would be this month's Daring Bakers' challenge, I was pretty excited to finally bake with yeast. Early Sunday morning seemed like an ideal time to make my bagels. (I don't know why but I seem to associate bread baking with Sunday morning.) I really loved the smell of the yeast proofing. Although incorporating the flour into the yeast-water mixture with a wooden spoon was a sticky situation, the kneading by hand was very therapeutic. I hardly needed any flour to keep the dough from sticking to my marble kitchen counter. I did have to knead for some time to bring the doughy mess to a nice smooth ball, but it was very relaxing and the yeasty smell in the air was somewhat comforting.

The ambient temperature of my kitchen was only 67F but considering how much yeast the recipe required I expected my dough to rise really quickly. And it did seem like I was off to great start since the dough started to rise quite noticeable at first. But then after 2 hours my dough had only grown to about 1.5 times the original volume. But I was anxious to finish up my bagels and get on with the rest of my day so I went ahead and punched down the dough and divided the dough into 16 chunks like the recipe instructed. (Although, I think the dough could've been divided into 24 regular sized bagels as opposed to 16 giant bagels.)

Initially I formed my bagels using the "snake" method but I didn't like the way they looked. I had trouble rolling them evenly so some parts were thicker than other parts and the area where I pinched the ends together just didn't look good to me. So I switched over to the "hole-centric" method which I found was easier for me and made my bagels more even all around. I let them rise for about 10 minutes on the countertop before boiling. I didn't really notice any change in the size of my formed bagels during this rest. (And in hindsight I made my holes way too big, but I thought the dough would rise a bit more and "fill in" but unfortunately it didn't. Instead I'm left with ugly bagel rings instead of cute chubby bagels*.)

Now these were some really big bagels. I mean, they are huge. I used a large stock pot that's 12 inches in diameter but I was still only able to boil 2 bagels at a time. Towards the end I did boil 3 at a time but they crowded each other in the pot and squished each other a bit. So as I'm boiling batch after batch, I'm thinking that these are the biggest ugliest bagels I have ever seen and that the next (and final) step of baking in the oven won't change that fact. I must say that I was quite disheartened. But this was my very first tryst with yeast, kneading and forming dough. Even so, I had hoped for the best outcome.

So after I pulled my first batch of bagels from the oven I thought they looked more like fossils than bagels. I tasted one and thought they weren't too bad. But I did think my bagels were a bit flavorless. Topping my bagels with poppy seeds, sea salt or sesame seeds before baking wouldn't have improved the flavor by much. They were slightly chewy but not tough, a tad crispy on the outside and without any doughiness on the inside. These were definitely not those fluffy things you get at Noah's Bagels. I have no idea if these truly are real Jewish bagels, but I will definitely try making bagels again (maybe with this or a different recipe). And I'll definitely try baking other things with yeast. Hopefully I'll have better luck next time.

* When I write my monthly DB challenge post I try not to read the challenge posts by the other Daring Bakers until after I publish mine. But given the talent pool, I'm positive that everyone else's bagels will be cute chubby ones.

36 comments:

Mary, congrats on completing the challenge and successfully using yeast! My bagels had reasonably large holes as well (I used the 'hole-centric method'), but they did become a bit smaller after the second rising..

Welcome to the world of yeast. One way to "cheat" if you don't see that you are getting much rise is to put your oven broiler on for about 3-5 minutes so that the top of the stove gets a little warm. Then place your proofing bowl on top of that...always helps it along.

You didn't choose the easiest recipe to try yeast for the first time: I've been baking with yeast since I'm 11 or 12 and I still can't make nice bagels!But then I never tasted a real bagel because it's very difficult to find in France so I can't compare...

Mary , welcome to the world of yeast...I have not used much of it before either. Your bagels look wonderful! And you are wrong about chubby bagels ....this daring baker (me) had flat ones that could almost be a flying saucer...

Mary, welcome to the joys (and sometimes sorrows) of baking with yeast! Sorry you didn't quite get the big fluffy bagels you wanted but I'm glad you are going to keep trying yeast. Great job!! I'm so excited to have you join us 'yeast sisters'.

Thanks for posting your bagels even though they aren't perfect. It's encouraging for an amateur baker like me to see that not everything turns out perfectly the first time, even for an experienced baker!

Big holes no holes (bagel butt crack), it's a challenge. Being Daring isn't about perfect. So glad you are daring and took things to a conclusion. Just know that there will be great success with yeast yet. Mark my words.

Congrats on getting over the yeast "hump"! I'm sorry to hear the bagels weren't what you were hoping for, but I'm tickled that you enjoyed working with the yeast and the promise that brings of excellent bread posts in the future!

I'm more a fan of the poke method too, but abandoned it in hopes that the snake method would improve the texture of the bagels. I'm not sure it made that much of a difference though, and I ended up with croiggels since they all came undone in the water.

I think you did a great job with your first yeast baked good and the bagels. Sometimes if I notice that my dough isn't rising, I put the bowl in a warm water bath to speed things along. I was scared of yeast for a long time but now I use instant instead of active dry so I can skip the proofing.

The alpine strawberry (Fragaria vesca) is a cousin of the wild strawberry. It's sometimes simply referred to as alpineberry. I love to bake, cook and garden. My blog is a place to share my recipes and other tiny tidbits of my life.